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This application is a part of the nwg-shell project.
Azote is a GTK+3 - based picture browser and background setter, as the frontend to the swaybg (sway/Wayland) and feh (X windows) commands. The user interface is being developed with multi-headed setups in mind. Azote also includes several colour management tools.
The program, written primarily for sway, should work on all wlroots-based Wayland compositors, as well as on some X11 window managers. GNOME is not supported.
Azote relies on numerous external packages. Some of them determine if the program is capable of working in a certain
environment (sway / another wlroots-based compositor / X11). It's up to the packager which of them come preinstalled.
It's recommendable to first run azote
from terminal:
-
if one of missing packages disallows Azote to work at all (e.g.
xorg-xrandr
orfeh
on X11,wlr-randr
orswaybg
on Wayfire), the program will display a message and terminate with exit code 1. -
If a missing dependency just stops some feature from working, Azote will display a message and start normally.
$ azote
python-send2trash package not found - deleting pictures unavailable
Running on Wayland, but not sway
Available screen height: 1030 px; measurement delay: 5 ms
The most commonly used desktop background browser and setter is aimed at X windows, and does not work with
wlroots-based composers. Since the swaybg
command does everything we may need, it's enough to give it a GUI.
In order not to limit the program usage to the single environment, Azote is also capable of using feh
when running on i3, Openbox or other X11 window managers.
The description below takes into account the current master
branch. All the features may or may not be available in the
package already released for a certain Linux distribution. Some features rely on
optional dependencies.
- works on wlroots;
- uses own thumbnails, 240x135px by default;
- flips wallpapers horizontally;
- splits wallpapers between 2 or more displays;
- scales and crops images to detected or user-defined display dimensions;
- generates a colour palette on the basis of an image;
- picks a colour from the screen;
- allows to find and edit colour definitions in
.Xresources
andalacritty.yml
files.
Select the folder your wallpapers are stored in. If it contains a lot of big pictures, it may take some time for Azote to create thumbnails. It's being performed once per folder, unless you clear the thumbnails folder.
Most of the buttons seem to be self-explanatory, with a little help from their tooltip text. What may not be clear
at first is the Apply selected picture to all screens
button. It applies unchanged
selected picture to all displays, regardless of whether they are currently connected/detected. It may be useful if you
often connect and disconnect displays. A shortcut to this feature is just to double click a thumbnail. It'll always
use the 'fill' mode, however.
Azote, as well as feh, saves a batch file to your home directory. It needs to be executed in order to set the wallpaper on subsequent logins or reboot.
Edit your ~/.config/sway/config
file. Replace your current wallpaper settings, like:
output * bg /usr/share/backgrounds/sway/Sway_Wallpaper_Blue_1920x1080.png fill
with:
exec ~/.azotebg
Add exec-once = ~/.azotebg-hyprland
to your hyprland.conf.
Since v1.12.0, we no longer use common ~/.azotebg file on sway and Hyprland, as they don't detect generic display names the same way.
In ~/.config/wayfire.ini
set autostart_wf_shell = false
, and replace background = wf-background
with
background = ~/.azotebg
.
Important: optional wlr-randr
/ wlr-randr-git
and swaybg
packages are necessary.
You need to execute ~/.fehbg
from your window manager’s startup file.
You'll also need optional feh
and xorg-xrandr
packages.
Important: optional xorg-xrandr
and feh
packages are necessary.
dwm note:
If you start dwm from a script, it may look something like this:
# Statusbar loop
while true; do
xsetroot -name "$( date +"%F %R" )"
sleep 1m # Update time every minute
done &
# Autostart section
~/.fehbg &
exec dwm
python
(python3
)python-setuptools
python-gobject
python-pillow
gtk3
python-cairo
python-send2trash
imagemagick
: for screen color picker in every environmentgrim
,slurp
: for screen color picker on sway / wlrootsmaim
,slop
: for screen color picker on X11libappindicator-gtk3
: for tray status iconpython-yaml
: for alacritty.yml toolboxswaybg
: for setting background on wlroots-based compositors other than swayfeh
: for setting background on X11-based WMsxorg-xrandr
: for checking outputs on X11-based WMswlr-randr
(wlr-randr-git
): for checking outputs on wlroots-based compositors other than sway
Please use assets from the latest release.
Seeing Arch PKGBUILD may be informative.
{
"thumb_width": "240",
"columns": "3",
"color_icon_w": "100",
"color_icon_h": "50",
"clip_prev_size": "30",
"palette_quality": "10",
"tracking_interval_seconds": "5",
"screen_measurement_delay": "300"
}
Azote is being developed on the 1920 x 1080 box, and some graphics dimensions may not go well with other screens. The runtime configuration file allows to redefine them:
thumb_width
- thumbnail width; changing the value triggers thumbnails regeneration on startup;columns
- initial number of columns in thumbnails preview;color_icon_w
,color_icon_h
,clip_prev_size
- define dimensions of pictures which represent colors in the color palette view;palette_quality
- affects quality and time of generation of the colour palette on the basis of an image; the less - the better, but slower; default value is 10;tracking_interval_seconds
- determines how often the current wallpapers folder should be checked for file addition / deletion;screen_measurement_delay
(ms) - introduced to resolve #108. SinceGdk.Screen.height
has been deprecated, there's no reasonable way to determine the screen dimensions. We need to open a temporary window and measure its height to open the Azote window with maximum allowed vertical dimension. Different hardware and window managers need different time to accomplish the task. Increase the value if the (floating) window does not scale to the screen height. Decrease as much as possible to speed up launching Azote.
$ azote -h
Azote wallpaper manager version 1.x.y
[-h] | [--help] Print help
[-l] | [--lang] <ln_LN> Force a locale (de_DE, en_EN, fr_FR, pl_PL)
[-c] | [--clear] Clear unused thumbnails
[-a] | [--clear-all] Clear all thumbnails
Turn the "Use generic display names" preferences switch on (since v1.9.1). See #143.
As well thumbnails, as displays preview inherit from the Gtk.Button class. In case you don't see images inside them,
please make sure that button images are turned on in the ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini
file:
[Settings]
(...)
gtk-button-images=1
Azote v1.2.0 and below - no 'Open with' menu entry at all;
Azote v1.3.0 and above - the only program listed is feh.
The /usr/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache
is probably missing from your system. Regenerate it:
$ sudo update-desktop-database
See https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/0.9.5/ar01s07.html
Since Gdk.Screen.height
has been deprecated, there's no reasonable way to determine the screen dimensions.
We need to open a temporary window (maximized or fullscreened on sway) and measure its height to open the Azote
window with maximum allowed vertical dimension.
This does not apply to sway, where we measure the screen in another way.
In ~/.config/azote/azoterc
you'll find the "screen_measurement_delay": "300"
value. Different hardware
and window managers need different time to open the temporary window. Increase the value if the (floating)
window does not scale to the screen height. Decrease as much as possible to speed up launching Azote (and not to
see the black screen on sway). On my development machine the minimum value is 30 ms on sway and 5 ms on Wayfire.
The background color picker won't be available. You'll also be unable to select different modes ("scale", "max", "fill", "center", "tile") for certain displays. The list of modes varies from what you see in Sway ("stretch", "fit", "fill", "center", "tile").